Installation Views within Palazzo Bembo

Dedy Sufriadi’s presentation, Hypertext: Visual Thought Catalysts, is installed on the First Floor (areas C09 & C10) of Palazzo Bembo, one of the three locations where the ECC’s Personal Structures: Reflections is being held. Palazzo Bembo is roughly 100 m southwest from the south end of the Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto) along the Grand Canal. If traveling by ferry, it’s located just beside the Rialto terminal, within the San Marco area of Venice.

Consisting of five paintings, this small collection provides a concise snapshot of the many visual style sets within the wide and diverse Hypertext series of works. Some of these have text multilayered on the canvas surface, presented in a mix of styles and techniques, often incorporating naïve figurations amidst carefully crafted color compositions. In others, Dedy incorporates and collages receptacles of text – books, magazine and newspaper fragments, notebooks, etc. – arranged and layered to become augmented surfaces upon which the artist’s compositions are rendered.

Hypertext: Visual Thought Catalysts

Indonesian abstract artist Dedy Sufriadi views text as something that is ubiquitous; we see and are inundated by it, in one form or another, at virtually every waking moment, often without us even realizing it. An avid reader since his days as an undergraduate, particularly in the area of existentialist philosophy, text has become a core component of his artistic practice. How Dedy uses text in his works, however, has evolved since the beginning of his career as an artist, which now spans some two decades.

Earlier in his career, circa early 1990s, Dedy used text in a very straightforward way, as supple-mental explanations or clues to existential concepts and ideas difficult to visually articulate in his paintings, abstract semi-figurative color compositions incorporating naïve elements within. Text used in this way wasn’t something new to visual art, nor alien to Indonesian artistic norms. In this early period, he used text to communicate his many personal experiences, reflections, and daily observations, accompanying the visuals in his artworks. Often, he would directly transcribe text pertinent to his visuals from books or other materials he happened to be read-ing at the time.

But after a while, Dedy began to question the purpose and role of text in his art. Specifically, he pondered deeply whether how he used text contributed towards an expansion of experiential knowledge for the viewer, or if the text he rendered merely acted as static modifiers to as-sist in the understanding of his visual aesthetics. This process of introspection eventually led to an exercise of philosophical evaluation, ultimately resulting in the development of Hypertext, an aesthetic construct based on text. Text becomes multilayered and legibility became less of a concern, instead becoming elements of design, much like how colors, lines and strokes are used in paintings.

The term “hypertext” itself is borrowed from the world of Information Technology, referring to dynamically linked graphical or textual objects allowing users to navigate from one location to another, where other dynamically linked objects might be found. This non-sequential linking of information used in the world of IT is the aesthetic basis of Dedy’s newfound purpose for text in his artworks. By multilayering text with other design elements – with text often applied using different styles, methods, and mediums within a single artwork – text in the Hypertext artworks transform into visual cues, becoming catalysts for the viewer to further develop thoughts and ruminations beyond the canvas. The viewer is therefore no longer a mere reader of static text but in addition becomes the author of their own ideas and insights, inspired by what is visually discerned.

This collection of artworks by Dedy Sufriadi presents a sampling of the many visual style sets he has created within the wide ambit of his Hypertext series. Some of these utilize the canvas surface on its own while others incorporate objects that are receptacles of text – books, maga-zine and newspaper fragments, notebooks, etc. – arranged and layered to become augment-ed surfaces upon which the artist’s compositions are rendered.

Dedy Sufriadi

b. 1976 in Palembang, Indonesia 

Dedy Sufriadi is one of Indonesia’s leading contemporary artists of his generation. His artworks provide insights to the changing world around him through the use of visual elements frequently found in his artworks, among others, text, textures, naïve figurations, and gestural strokes. There is an aura of philosophical simplicity to be found in Dedy’s artworks, despite the multi-layered presentation often achieved through complex processes. In part, this could be attributed to the artist’s almost decade-long immersion in existential philosophy early on in his career. There is also the transition from strict logical application of compositional techniques to Dedy allowing his intuition to fully take charge; it is a process that the artist has progressively been infusing into his artistic practice. 

Complete Artist Bio

戴狄・蘇非阿迪

1976年出生於印度尼西亞 巴倫邦

戴狄・蘇非阿迪 (Dedy Sufriadi) 是印度尼西亞最傑出的當代藝術家之一。他的作品中經常發現文字、紋理、樸素的形象和手勢筆觸，通過這些視覺元素，回應他周圍不斷變化的世界提供了另一種洞察力。儘管戴狄經常通過複雜的過程實現多層次的展示，但在他的藝術作品中可以找到一種哲學上的簡單的光環。在某種程度上，這可以歸因於藝術家在其職業生涯的早期沉浸在存在主義哲學中近十年之久。這是他從嚴格的邏輯應用組合技巧到直覺領先的轉變過渡；也是藝術家逐漸融入藝術實踐的過程。

完整的藝術家簡歷